This weekend in the Guardian, Professor Sarah Churchwell confronts the ghost of Bridget Jones and the persistent stereotype of the dismal singleton. Her column gets it so right that I was tempted just to reproduce it here in its entirety. But Churchwell broached so many issues—about the power of stereotyping and singledom—that I wanted to discuss it in greater detail.

A survey this week – misleadingly called a “study” by some reports – found that of 2,000 [British] women in their mid-20s, a majority of those polled felt that 26 was the ideal age for marriage, and hoped to have children a year later. The implication was clear to editors across the country: Bridget Jones is back! One paper explained that young women don’t want to end up “like author Helen Fielding’s fictional singleton”. But this isn’t the return of Bridget Jones so much as the dogged survival of an insistent stereotype: women need to get married young and have babies. And judging by this survey, young women are listening.

The editor of More magazine, which commissioned the poll, commented, “Young women today no longer want to be party girls throughout their 20s only to reach their early 30s and find they’ve loved and lost Mr Right. They don’t want to fall into the Bridget Jones syndrome and view their future through an empty wine glass.”

“Times are changing fast,” the report concluded. Changing times may sound like progress; sadly, this report represents anything but. Careers, evidently, have no place in women’s plans: girls just want to have fun, and then marry Mr Right, so they’d better not wait too long or he’ll slip through their fingers.

More, incidentally, bills itself as “A comprehensive resource and community for women over 40.” Part of their over-40 community spirit appears to be snarking on young women’s career and marriage choices. It’s the same chauvinist faux-concern women have been fed for years: we want you to be happy, but if you prioritize your own fulfillment you’ll wind up miserable and aloooooone. Congrats, More magazine—you win the gold-medal for Undermining.

Bridget Jones’s Diary—the novel based on Helen Fielding’s newspaper columns—was published in 1996, the year I gradated from college, moved to New York and began climbing the career ladder. Bridget was a decade older than me, but I identified with her in an aspirational way. Bridget was like the big sister whose strappy heels you might borrow for a night out; I tried on her dating-work-friendship stories as I started to create my own.

I was one of many. Churchwell points out:

Women who identified with Bridget Jones in the 90s didn’t view her story as a cautionary tale; she represented not what they feared, but how they felt. Which, by the way, wasn’t miserable, or desperate, although occasionally lonely.

Here’s a newsflash: men are occasionally lonely, too. Where are the surveys asking them what they think the ideal age is to marry and have babies? Personally, I’m waiting for the “study” that shows Ms Right is so busy pursuing her career that Mr Right needs stop playing his Wii and go find her.

Right on. I’ve harped on this plenty, but it bears repeating. Society treats women as though it’s our highest calling to make a man want to marry us—even if that requires giving up on education, career and financial security. It’s never his responsibility to drop everything to find the right woman, or to accept her for who she is. Nor does anyone expect him to be tormented by the possibility of winding up alooooone. The stereotype of the desperate singleton with the empty wine glass and cats and a pint of ice cream is reserved only for the despised single female.

Churchwell notes:

The problem, again, is stereotyping. Asking “What do women want?” presumes that all women want the same thing – and the answer assumed by those who are not women continues to revolve around marriage, the home and children.

Sadly, due to the inevitable creep of stereotyping, the answer isn’t just “assumed by those who are not women.” It’s assumed by women too. Stereotyping single women is a misogynist pile-on that women also participate in, including Bridget’s creator, Helen Fielding.

Unfortunately, the evolution of Bridget Jones’s story has been all too representative of the way “times are changing”. In the first novel and film, Bridget was insecure, yes, but surrounded by loving friends, enjoying her work, and learning self-respect; her gentle embarrassments were endearing.

By the second [Bridget Jones] film, in keeping with the dismal, downward spiral of recent “chick flicks”…Bridget’s character was forced into increasingly degrading situations, in which her behaviour is borderline deranged. She has far less investment in her career, and is so desperate to preserve her relationship that she constantly humiliates herself. By 2005, creator Helen Fielding was writing columns in which 40-something Bridget was now desperate for a baby; persistent rumours of a third Bridget Jones film presume that her biological clock will drive the plot – and doubtless she’ll be interpreted as an object lesson once more.

This dismal downward spiral–and the fact that I find Renee Zellweger incredibly irritating–is why I gave up on Bridget long ago. Helen Fielding’s vision of Bridget’s life went from a knowing, funny narration of an urban professional’s highs and lows to nothing but the lows, as her heroine became increasingly pathetic, neurotic and baby-hungry. Fielding went from inviting her women readers to identify with Bridget to inviting them to mock Bridget and to fear turning out like her. It’s as though Fielding—and Hollywood—simply couldn’t imagine a different future for Bridget: if she was single and working by her mid-thirties, she was doomed to be a joke, a fool, a lonely, regret-filled cautionary tale. It’s no wonder that the later adventures of Bridget Jones failed to sell the way the original did.

Of course, if you choose not to be like Bridget, you’re no more assured of happiness or societal approval. Fictional women with successful careers who deliberately choose not marry may not be presented as pathetic and pitiable, but they are inevitably scorned in other ways:

Meanwhile recent films such as The Devil Wears Prada, The Ugly Truth and The Proposal vilify career women as frigid and uptight, and anywhere from controlling to malevolent.

This is why Harpy trips to the movies often result in muttered obscenities during the previews for rom-coms. It’s nearly impossible to find a comedy with female characters that’s not based on one of two premises: desperate single gal must cutely entrap a willing male or cold-hearted career bitch must reform herself in order to find love. PhDork has gotten to the point where she can express her utter disdain for such movies simply by frowning and flaring her nostrils. Pilgrim Soul and I still resort to outright cussing. I also bounce up and down in my seat a little. You may not want to sit next to us at your local multiplex.

But:

Does it matter? The standard defence is that these stories are merely stories, not a treatise on contemporary womanhood. But in aggregate, that’s just what they are. It’s no coincidence that a film such as last year’s He’s Just Not That Into You began life as a self-help book: these stories are advice manuals, and women – and men – are listening. Just ask the young women who’ve decided to get married 10 years younger than they might have done a decade ago.

Well…I’m not as convinced as Churchwell that stereotypes can abolish the advances women have made. The constant toxic drip-drip of stereotypes and double standards often gnaws away at the pleasure we should be taking in our achievements.That can leave women feeling angry, confused and resentful–and rightly so. But in practical terms, are the survey’s young women who want to be married by 26 actually doing that en masse?

The data for the United States, at least, says that the “play dumb and marry young lest you wind up alooooone” message is not gaining much traction. Education and work are more a priority for women than ever before, and more women now graduate from college than men. An increasing number of women are out-earning their husbands, who fail to shun them for such temerity. And professional, educated women—far from being discarded for their frigid, career-bitch ways—are getting and staying married in greater numbers than their less-educated counterparts, even as they are marrying significantly later than their foremothers did. The tired notion that a woman will wind up alone if she doesn’t mate before her mid-20s certainly exists, but the data would indicate it’s more a platitude than a reality.

Despite this, stereotypes derive staying power from their familiarity. Stereotypes are hard to uproot, and they grow lots of low-hanging fruit for the entertainment industry. It’s easier to create entertainment—be it novels, TV shows or movies–that play into existing stereotypes than it is to come up with an alternative. With few exceptions, Hollywood–and publishers, to a lesser extent–are so lazy and risk-averse that they keep recycling the same threadbare plots and stock characters. That invariably leads to a shucking, jiving gallery of bros, hos, ditzes and bitches, with maybe just a smidge of empowerfulment in the form of cocktails and casual sex.

Sarah Churchwell takes a very dim view of what results:

Social psychologists – in actual studies in the US and Europe – have identified a process called “stereotype activation”, in which people characterised by a demeaning stereotype (whether sexist, racist, or any other) unconsciously fulfil it. Many experiments have shown that when a group of women and men taking a maths test are told that they will perform equally well, they do. But when women are reminded of the gender stereotypes around maths, they significantly underperform. This is the power of suggestion – and, crucially, the women weren’t verbally abused, they were just patronised. What they were basically told is: “I’m sure you girls will do just fine.” And you know what? They didn’t.

I’m not sure the data supports rock-bottom pessimism. There’s no doubt that women are constantly receiving and absorbing harmful or unhelpful messages, including the pernicious “you’ll be aloooooone” one. The truth is, women have always been assailed by such negativity; there’s been no time in the history of womankind that we have not been the target of manipulative messages and pernicious stereotypes.

The radical achievements we’ve made, especially over the last 100 years, put paid to the old stereotypes of women as dumb, silly and helpless. New ones have sprung up to accomodate the cultural shift–the barren career-bitch is purely a 20th century invention—but despite this, women’s achievements are accelerating, not stalling. Looking at women’s actions, rather than society’s conventions, might prove instructive for those tempted to trot out Bridget Jones as a scare tactic–and as proof that women can’t win.

I really, really don’t mean for this to come off in a “What about teh menz??” way, but to me it’s always seemed as if the male analogue of the Cat Lady is the Dude Who Lives In His Mom’s Basement. (Usually one who is fat, slovenly, crude and into “nerd culture.”) That does seem equally pernicious a stereotype, but flipped to the other side of the double-standard coin: he’s not socially disdained because he’s unmarried, he’s socially disdained because he’s not “getting any,” as if it’s a crime for a man to either not want sex or to refuse to commodify it.

And I have to admit that I don’t like the phrase “women can’t win” because I find it goddamn depressing. Not that I want you to lie and say everything’s happy sunshine rainbows, but I feel that makes it sound like all our efforts are in vain and we may as well all just kill ourselves. I’d rather the sentence be “women can’t win in the current power structure.” We CAN win—eventually, and most likely not in our lifetimes—if there’s a continuous force of us chipping away at The Goddamn Patriarchy.

Cat, when I used the phrase:” women can’t win”, it was in the context of the data disproving that idea. I don’t think refuting a stereotype makes it sound like “all our efforts are in vain and we may as well just kill ourselves.”

And I think you’re totally right about there also being negative stereotypes of single men. But for every “loser in his mom’s basement” stereotype of the single man, there’s a “playa/eligible bachelor” stereotype that celebrates men’s staying single and treats older single men like a prize to be won, not a reject to be pitied. Witness the difference between the way the media treats Jennifer Aniston and the way it treats George Clooney, both over 40 and single.

We need more women out there blogging and speaking about the fact that she’s enjoying life and when not pursuing her career/keeping friends/traveling/being spectacular she isn’t trolling constantly for Mr. Right.

I most certainly enjoy my man friends but that doesn’t mean I’m allllonnnnee! Or sssadddd! It’s a personal and amazing choice. Searching for the other half indeed! More like loving myself and learning new and amazing things. Not knocking on married women but it does get annoying when I can see the pity or scorn on another womans face when I don’t broadcast despiration. Will we might not understand someones choice we must respect it- and shut up.

Ta-Nehisi Coates recently posted an excerpt from Grant’s autobiography that I think is applicable here in a round-about way. Basically Grant (who was unfamiliar with wolves) and an army companion (who was familiar with wolves) were riding their horses through the prairie at night to a cacophony of wolf howls. Grant was scared, and would have turned back if his companion had not seemed so unmoved; Grant didn’t want to look wimpy. When his companion asked Grant to estimate the number of wolves, Grant, figuring his companion would expect him to overestimate the number, purposefully underestimated the number at 20. It turns out there were only two. Wolves have the ability to howl together in a way as to make it seem like there are an unlimited number of them. The moral to Grant’s story (which he was applying to wailing politicians) was that: “There are always more of them before they are counted.”

These kinds of studies are like those howling wolves. We’re bombarded with dire pronouncements that women are abandoning their careers for men and babies and economic uncertainty because they don’t want to be old and alone, blah, blah, blah. It’s enough to make one want to retreat and just give up the fight. Part of how we combat this, I think, is to count, which is just what Becky did by citing the statistics that show all is not what this “study” would have us believe. We can’t let them outshout us and convince others to be afraid, or that there’s no use in pushing forward. Because if we get to that point, then we really will have something to worry about.

But this isn’t the return of Bridget Jones so much as the dogged survival of an insistent stereotype: women need to get married young and have babies. And judging by this survey, young women are listening.

Putting aside for a moment the flaws in these articles, it seems the message women of our generation are being given is not “you go girl with your fine leather briefcase, you can have it all”, but rather “hurry up, find a man and pop out some babies before you get OLD!”

Does this mean that in 10 years time we’ll be seeing Betty Friedan-esque books about being sold the lie that happiness comes from marriage and babies?

Talls wolf analogy sounds right, two of anything these days make a trend, and the media scours the earth looking for fodder. I love following links to these articles and seeing the obscure places they come from. Living maybe is like being in a restaurant .. look over the menu yeah, but choose something and eat it! Why sit around wishing you’d tried the catfish. I think my analogy lost its way oh well.

Since when is encouraging women to marry young and have lots of children evidence of “changing times?”. Despite growing up in the supposedly-liberated 80s/90s/2000s it’s a message that I received loud and clear (although apparently did not heed, as I’m 30 and happily coupled though not married, and not planning on children).

I’m from a small town, where young marriage and baby-having never stopped being the ideal. I had to leave town in order to find folks who could accept that it wasn’t my top priority in my 20s. I’m not exactly career-obsessed either (my job is fine, but not thrilling). It’s just that I’m living my life MY way.

This is not a new idea – just an old idea shouting, trying to be heard among a sea of new ideas women can choose from in charting their own course.

We’ve been fed this story for so long–fear of winding up alone, or our biological clock running out–that of course women in their 20s might tell a pollster they want to be married by 26. I’m sure there are a lot of women who are surprised to find that being single and independent is the better option. Or maybe they always suspected that privately, but know it’s not the “right” answer to give in public. In your 20s you’re still young enough to think there’s a right and wrong schedule, as opposed to life being a series of surprises.

“a majority of those polled felt that 26 was the ideal age for marriage, and hoped to have children a year later.”

I felt 26 would have been the “ideal” age to finish my PhD, getting a great TT job a year later, but 1) I didn’t expect that to happen, 2) I knew that it wasn’t something I could MAKE happen and 3)I figured that would come at some point, and that I would work towards it while enjoying the non-academic parts of my life.

I think far too much is being read into this study. Abstract ideals are not necessarily reflected in behavior, and that’s what should be used as a barometer of some sort of value-shift.

@PhDork & Spark: True. And we all know that when it comes to ideals vs. reality, people’s ideals about marriage—We’ll be together forever!—are in stark contrast to the reality, much of which can be documented by divorce statistics.

@Tall: I fucking love that wolf anecdote. I’m going to get a lot of use out of it. Thanks!

@flackette: Yes, there’s no doubt that message is the same shit wrapped up with a new bow. It’s also being gifted pretty exclusively to white, upper-middle-class women, since they are just about the only group for whom dropping everything and becoming young SAHMs is possible.

@Rachel: It’s true that the pendulum swings, but I sincerely hope that it won’t swing so far that a generation of women have to re-learn all the hard lessons about how unrewarding it is to NOT have options. I read a review of Lori Gottlieb’s odious book recently that pointed out rather brilliantly that the book assumes that the only way women will choose to settle is that someone is hectoring them with all kinds of scare tactics.

[...] alarm and faux-concern over the dismal 35-year old single lady. I already vented about that in my Bridget Jones post last month. If you’re not married by 35, you’re an object of pity at best and contempt [...]